Tag: bulb

Carrying on the thoughts on lambency from my last post, “Christmas Ornaments 2018 III”, here is a macro of our Christmas tree. There is no element of the Christmas celebration so puzzling to outsiders as the practice of sacrificing a beautiful tree, to drag it inside for display, presenting a part of the forest as a sacred object, touched by light or, in earlier times, tongues of fire (candles).

Click this photograph for my Fine Art Photography galleryPam presents me with a Christmas ornament every year and this was the first.

Stories of the fragrance of holiness, sometimes attributed to the Holy Spirit or Saints, are sprinkled throughout traditional Christianity within personal testimony and scripture as well as in our celebrations and rites as incense. A character of the freshly cut pine that melds well with this tradition is the unmistakable fragrance of a freshly cut evergreen conifer , reminiscent of the precious, aromatic resin frankincense, one of the gifts to the infant Jesus from the three wise men of the east. In spite of saving several dozen authentic trees, our artificial conifer has not acquired the sacred fragrance.

The first blown-glass bulbs, such as our large elaborate specimen of the photograph, were produced by heating sand to the melting point, putting a dab on the end of a very long heat resistant pipe. When encircled by a clay mold, when the pipe is blown into the glass expands to coat with clay with a thin layer of glass. The addition of silver and other shiny compounds allow the finished product to capture and reflect light. Each bulb is its own lambent tongue of flame, licked with captive light.